The Wonders of Nibelheim
by OwMyFace
Summary: Traumatised by her torture at the hands of the remnants, Elena is made to take a holiday in Nibelheim to recover. Her vacation gets complicated when she discovers a dead body, and has to confront dark secrets in the town and in her own brain. Post-AC.
1. Chapter 1

**The Wonders of Nibelheim**

* * *

Chapter I

"This is bullshit," Elena said.

She had been hunched in the passenger seat for the last hour of their drive, arms folded, chin on her chest, frowning so her eyebrows shadowed the top of her vision. Inside she felt all hot and twisted up. Her mother would have said she was "stewing".

They were rolling through the wasteland and everything outside the windows was grey. Grey rocks, grey dirt, the grey skeletons of long-dead shrubs. Overhead, a sheet of cloud hung from the sky. Elena caught herself wondering if anything would ever grow here again.

"What?" Rude said, his eyes not leaving the road.

"This," Elena told him, pushing herself up in the seat. "This whole vacation thing. It's bullshit and I don't need it."

Rude grunted and Elena couldn't figure what he meant by it. Why did the big bastard have to make himself so hard to understand?

"I can't believe Rufus is _making_ me take a holiday," she carried on. "I'm not a little girl. I can decide for myself."

Rude's big shoulders rose and fell. A shrug. "You haven't had a day off in two years," he said. Now that Rude was talking, Elena wished he'd shut his mouth. She should have known he'd tow Rufus' line.

"Neither have you!" she objected. "None of us have."

Rude didn't say anything, but the lines rolling in on his forehead told Elena she'd scored a point. He arced the car around a bend.

"You know what? I don't even want your sympathy," Elena told him. "I want to work. Turn this car around and take me back to Edge."

Rude stayed silent, focused on the road. Elena wanted to punch him. In the back of her mind she knew she was being unreasonable; this wasn't Rude's fault, he didn't deserve the ear-bashing she was giving him. But knowing that only made her more pissed off.

Then she noticed how uncomfortable Rude was – how his hands shifted on the wheel, his shoulders crept up towards his ears, his breathing had lost its steady rhythm – and her stomach twisted and guilt melted down the insides of her ribcage. She remembered how much Rude hated fighting with people he cared about.

"I'm sorry," she said, letting her body slump back into the seat. "I didn't mean that. I'm just – I'm in a shitty mood, okay? It's all that stuff Rufus said about 'time to heal'. Can't he see that I'm fine? The remnants didn't even mess me up all that bad. Shit, Tseng got it much worse, but he's still back at HQ working his butt off. So how come he doesn't need a break? How come it's just me?"

Rude took a deep breath. "Laney, look. I'm just going to say it. You're not fine."

"What?"

"You haven't been yourself, y'know? I can look at you right now and see it. You haven't been eating well, sleeping, exercising. All you've done since we got you back is work. It's like you've got a fever, or something, y'know?"

For a moment Elena considered telling him about the nightmares. But Rude couldn't help her with them; he'd only worry. Besides, Turks didn't talk about that kind of stuff. They just hardened up and got on with the job.

"I think Rufus is worried about you," Rude said. "Hell, we all are."

Shit, was this was how the other Turks saw her? Weak, vulnerable? Little Laney, still the rookie in need of protection.

"Shit, Rude. You guys don't have to worry about me. I'm –"

A thought struck her and she left her sentence hanging.

"Shit, is Rufus hanging me out to dry?" she said. Panic scrambled in her belly. "He's hanging me out to dry, isn't he?"

"That's not –"

"Shit. Shit shit shit. I know I fucked up in the crater –"

"Laney –"

"I should have followed orders and got out of there, but –"

"Elena!" Rude barked. Elena froze and stared at him with the lids peeled back from her eyeballs, her hands squeezed into fists.

"Look. I don't know what's going on in Rufus' head, but I can guarantee he's not punishing you. You're a good Turk, Laney. Rufus knows that. We all do."

At Rude's words the hammering in Elena's chest softened and she breathed out, slowly, and sank back into the upholstery, fists unwinding. "Hey," she said, a smile gently pulling her lips apart. "Thanks, Rude."

Rude only grunted.

As the road continued south, the wasteland began to fray at the edges. Clumps of grass and small, tangled shrubs sprouted in green patches from the dead earth, and before long the road was cutting through a wide and windswept prairie.

Elena was quiet, staring out at the passing scenery, listening to the wind hiss and snap at the car windows. "A good Turk". The compliment glowed in her chest. But she couldn't help thinking that maybe she didn't deserve it.

After half an hour's silence, Rude asked, "So why Nibelheim?"

"What do you mean?"

"You could have gone anywhere for your vacation," Rude said. "Icicle, Wutai, Costa del Sol – why pick that backwater?"

"Guess I wanted somewhere I could do things, you know? Be active. I don't want to just lie on a beach. I want to climb mountains, or something," Elena said. Rufus might be able to stop her working, but he couldn't _force_ her to take it easy.

That was something none of them understood: relaxation was the last thing she needed. She had to keep busy, keep her mind occupied. That was the most important thing.

"Besides, I've been to all those other places," she said. "We went skiing every year when I was a kid. I want somewhere new."

"You've never been to Nibelheim?"

Elena shook her head.

"Weird place. You know about the –"

"The fire?"

"The incident."

"Of course. I read the file."

Rude nodded. "You'll get a warm reception, though."

"Why's that?"

"The townspeople. They're all ex-Shinra. Loyal, too. We did background checks on all of them."

Elena frowned. "Do they know about the incident?" she asked.

"We told them the town got attacked by monsters, that Sephiroth and the other troops got killed fighting them off. But that was before all those copies started showing up. Maybe they've figured it out." Rude sighed and his posture sank. "Guess it doesn't really matter now, anyway."

Another hour's driving and they were in Junon. As Rude guided the car through the terraced streets, Elena was shocked by how run-down the place was, how empty. It was six months since she'd last been there, but even in that time Junon had decayed. Windows were boarded up, trash piled in the gutters, and the sea air had corroded every exposed piece of metal. White lines of bird guano dripped down the building facades.

When she'd lived there as a child the city had been so neat and clean, and full of people. Elena remembered the soldiers patrolling the streets in their bright blue uniforms, the high crimson banners of Shinra.

"Not exactly bustling, is it?" she said. "I guess everyone moved away when the garrison disbanded."

"The village down below," Rude said. "It's gotten bigger. Still plenty of fish in the sea. That's one thing we didn't quite ruin."

He seemed to somehow shrink, and his eyes dropped to his lap for a second.

They both had these odd reflective moments sometimes, Reno and Rude. Tseng too, when he thought nobody was watching. They'd go all distant, look a little lost. Elena figured these moments had something to do with guilt, and she'd never asked about them. They made her glad she'd never had to do anything that really ate at her.

Rude pulled up at the docks and helped Elena get her bags out of the boot. "Take care of yourself, Laney," he said. "Please, try to relax. See you in two weeks."

Elena had to fight the urge to give him a hug. Turks didn't hug. "Yeah. Thanks for the ride, Rude," she said.

When he'd gone she was left standing on the pier with her suitcase and her backpack. A flock of seagulls wheeled overhead, screeching.

* * *

_A/N: This is something I've had stewing away for a long, long time. I have now tried writing it three times._

_It's my inclination not to post anything until I'm at least a few chapters ahead; I don't want to keep people waiting on updates, or create too much pressure for myself (I'm probably being a little egotistical in assuming people actually read/are invested in my shit, but hey). Also if I get a few chapters in and realize I don't like the story idea, I can bail without anyone noticing._

_But I've been really slack with writing lately, and I think maybe a little pressure might help me get this finished (third time lucky!). So: here it is. I hope to have a second chapter done soon._

_Thanks for reading!_


	2. Chapter 2

Elena had to hike the last twenty kilometres to Nibelheim. The truck driver she'd hitched with from Costa del Sol wasn't going out of his way for her, so she got out and walked with her backpack on and her sports bag draped over her shoulders.

She didn't mind the walk; it was beautiful country. Ahead of her rose the mountains, wrinkled grey rock with snow packed on the tops. She kept her mind busy counting birds in the sky, looking out for the little lizards that darted around under the dry tussock.

She thought about what she'd do to keep herself occupied when she arrived. She didn't think about the dark place.

By the time she set eyes on Nibelheim her shirt was wet with sweat under the pack, and a wind had sprung up to sting her eyes with dust. She felt kind of itchy, irritable.

Nibelheim struck her as almost unbearably quaint. The old fashioned houses with their matching red roofs were gathered around the water tower like old women at a card table. And everything penned in by this postcard picket fence.

Elena thought, You'd never guess all the awful things that had happened here. And maybe that was the idea.

But when she came through the entrance arch and into the central square, unease scuttled down the back of her neck. It was late afternoon and windows were lighting up, the first thin tendrils of smoke creeping out of chimneys. People were doing ordinary things – tending gardens, chopping wood, filling buckets at the water tower – but they all looked tense. Tight-mouthed, hard-eyed. And trying to look like they weren't staring at her.

Elena slapped a grin over her face and strode over to a boy splitting wood outside a house.

"Excuse me," she said. "You mind telling me where the inn is?"

The boy froze with the axe over his head and looked at her, frowning. The pose lifted his shirt up and Elena could see a line of spidery black hairs crawling down the skin between his belly button and his pants. He looked about sixteen and was missing a tooth – one of his canines.

He brought his axe down and buried it in the round on his block. It wasn't a clean split; the axehead got stuck halfway into the log.

The boy let go of his axe and straightened up.

"Over there," he said, pointing. "Can't you read or something?"

Elena followed the line of his finger to a two-storey building on the opposite side of the square. The word "Inn" was written on a sign at its front.

Annoyance – at herself, at this kid - pinched her gut.

"You're splitting the wood wrong," she told him. "Bend your knees, not your back."

Elena had never cut wood in her life, but she knew better than just about anyone how the body moved, how to get the most power out of it.

She left the boy to his glaring and walked over to the inn. She could almost feel the eyes of the townspeople creeping over her back.

She thought, That wasn't exactly the warm welcome Rude promised, was it? Maybe she should have gone to Wutai after all.

Inside, the inn was cold and empty. Wood and paper were stacked in the hearth but nobody had put a match to them. Elena dumped her backpack and rang the bell at the counter.

Nobody appeared. She looked around the room. Behind the counter rows of bottles glittered in the dull light, spirits Elena recognised from her days behind the bar in Wall Market. There were tables scattered around the room, each one immaculately set but obviously unused for quite a while. Dust had gathered in the spoons.

She waited a moment and rang the bell again. A girl slouched in from the kitchen and looked Elena over. She looked about the same age as the boy from before.

Great, Elena thought. Another sullen teenager.

She said: "I have a room reserved. Name's Elena."

"Okay," the girl said. She opened a big book on the counter and flicked through the pages. Her fingers were thin and white, like sticks of chalk.

"Found you," she said. "Room Three."

The front door opened. Elena turned and saw a man come in carrying a bag of apples. His eyebrows rose when he saw her and he smiled - a pleasant smile, but somehow fragile looking.

"Ah," he said. "You must be Elena."

He came over and shifted the apples to his left arm to shake her hand. His eyes were sunk deep into the flesh on either side of a big, crooked nose.

"I'm Raymond," he said. "I run the inn. Sorry I wasn't here to welcome you - I wasn't expecting you until later on. I hope Phoebe's made you comfortable?"

"Yeah," Elena said. "Everything's fine."

"Excellent," he said. "Why don't you go upstairs and settle in, and I'll get started on dinner. Phoebe, could you please get that fire going?"

"I'm busy, Dad. I was about to go out. Light it yourself." The girl was scowling.

"Phoebe, for Shiva's sake, I'm not asking much, am I?" He turned and appealed to Elena. "Am I?"

"Shit, don't get me involved," Elena said, backing off.

Phoebe threw her hands in the air and stormed out the front door, slamming it behind her. Dust drifted down from the ceiling.

"Don't mind her," Raymond said, letting his breath out. "It's just the hormones talking."

Looking at him, Elena saw someone trying desperately to be happy when he didn't have much to be happy about. She could almost see the muscles in his cheeks straining to hold up his smile.

"Don't worry about it," she said. She lifted her bags off the floor and lugged them up the stairs.

The room wasn't much: a bed, a wardrobe, a rug over the floorboards, a cramped bathroom out back. She opened her backpack on the floor and kept busy for a few minutes hanging her clothes in the cupboard. When that was done she threw the limp bag in a corner and sat on the bed, staring out the window.

Well, here she was. Let the vacation begin.

She didn't want to sit here by herself. She knew that if she was left alone with her thoughts, nothing to distract her, it was only a matter of time before her mind was dragged into the dark place with the bone-white trees and the pain, the pain that never -

She stood up, shaking her head. A distraction. That was what she needed. Something to keep her mind occupied.

Downstairs the fire was still unlit so Elena decided to do something about it. She found a box of matches on the mantelpiece and crouched down to set one to the balls of scrunched paper.

The flames slithered up into the kindling and the aroma of woodsmoke drifted into Elena's nose. She sat back and closed her eyes, basked the heat and the crackle.

"Oh, no, I won't have that," Raymond said.

He was standing in the door to the kitchen, wearing an apron and his brittle smile.

"I can't have a guest doing all the work," he said. "Please, sit down. You're embarrassing me."

"It's fine," Elena told him, getting to her feet. "I hate just sitting around. Can't I help you with dinner, or something?"

"No!" Raymond was beaming. He dried his hands on his apron and came into the room. Sweeping an arm along the row of stools at the bar, he said, "Take a seat. Let me pour you a drink."

"Sure," Elena said. A drink sounded like a good idea. She perched herself on a barstool and asked, "So I'm the only one staying here, am I?"

"I'm afraid so. These are tough times for Nibelheim. Not so long ago this place was full almost every week."

"Reactor scientists?"

"Yes. Shinra people were always coming and going. I had all the locals in at night too, drinking. Back then people had money. Plenty of jobs servicing the reactor. What did you do, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I was with the Turks."

Raymonds eyebrows rose, but then he shrugged and leaned back on the wall. "Well, I won't hold that against you. We all did things we weren't proud of, in those days."

"I didn't," Elena said.

The innkeeper's mouth opened but then he shut it like he'd had a better idea. "How about that drink?" he said.

"I'll take a whiskey."

"Great." Raymond turned to the shelf behind him and reached up to choose a green glass bottle. Elena recognised the label; it was good stuff.

"Shiva, it's been so long since I did this," he said, selecting a tumbler and spilling in two fingers of the thin blonde liquid. "Poured a drink, talked to a customer while they sat at the bar. I didn't realise how much I was missing it."

He set the glass on the counter before her. "So, what's brought you out here?" he said.

"I'm on vacation. Boss is making me kill two weeks," Elena said, taking a sip, savouring its sting. "Actually, I was thinking about climbing some mountains."

Raymond' brows shot up and he sucked air through his grimace. "I don't think that's a good idea, right now."

"Why's that?"

"There's a gang of bandits hanging around up there. They turned up last week some time."

"Out here? Shit." She should have known about that. Elena wondered if her colleagues had been keeping intel from her. Didn't they think she could keep her mouth shut, any more? "Has someone told the WRO?"

"Yes, but they're spread pretty thin right now," Raymond said. "Trouble up in the Fort Condor area, apparently. They said it would be a couple of weeks before they could get a squad out here. Hopefully the bandits will be gone by then."

"You don't think the town's in danger, do you?"

Raymond shrugged. "Hard to say. I'm not sure how many of them there are. But I think if they were going to raid us they would have done it by now, before we knew they were there."

"How did you find out they were here?" Elena said. Her mouth felt swollen with questions. This was just the sort of distraction she needed.

"They came into town last week – a small group of them, anyway. Said – well, I'm not going to bother repeating what they said."

"Hasn't anyone been up to scout around?"

"Shiva, no! Talk about prodding the sleeping death claw. What is it you tell your children to do if they're being bullied? 'Just ignore them. Walk away.'"

"So you're just going to pretend the bandits aren't there, is that it?"

"We had a town meeting about it." Raymond paused, frowning like he was considering his next words carefully. "Look, I was a corporal with Public Safety before we moved out here. I've dealt with people like this before, and I can tell you right now our best bet is to sit tight and wait for help to arrive."

"I could go check it out for you," Elena said.

"Come on now. Remember what I said about guests doing work?"

"I'm serious. I want to help. I want – I want to _do _something. I'll go crazy sitting around here for two weeks."

"But we don't want to provoke -"

"They won't even know I'm there. I'm a Turk, remember? I'm good at this shit. You'll sleep better knowing how many people are up there, where their camp is, what sort of weapons they have. Won't you?"

Raymond's smile sharpened and but the light in his eyes died. "That depends on what you find out," he said.

* * *

_Thanks for reading! I feel like this is moving pretty slowly, so I hope nobody's bored (let me know in a review if you are, though!). It'll pick up eventually..._


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

That night Elena's dreams were swallowed by darkness. She was back in the dark place, among the bone-white trees, lying in the chalky dirt and staring up into their branches. Skeletal fingers clawing at the inky sky.

The creak of leather, a flash of silver hair, silver knives, white teeth twisted in a little smile.

"Play with me."

And then comes the hurt.

She woke up and lay in the night, quivering, too frightened to even think as the sweat cooled on her skin. She wanted to light a candle but she was scared to move. If they noticed she was still conscious the pain would start again.

In some corner of her mind she knew she'd been dreaming, but the rest of her brain wouldn't accept that. The darkness could be hiding anything. That was the worst thing about it, the dark place. You never knew when the pain was going to start.

When the first fingers of dawn stretched into the room she finally uncurled from the ball she'd been huddled in. She lay on the bed for a few minutes, feeling wet and limp – wrung out – and just listened to her breathing even out.

Then she remembered she had work to do. She hauled herself up and wasted a few minutes standing in the shower. She pulled on some clothes – shorts, a thick jersey for warmth – and laced up her boots. She buckled on her shoulder holster, checked her pistol was clean and loaded. She shouldered her backpack and went downstairs, out the door.

Dawn was just breaking, orange above the peaks around Nibelheim, and the town was dusted with a fragile light that cast deep shadows. The only sound was the crunch of Elena's boots on the earth. She felt like the only person in the world.

The previous evening, Raymond had shown her the best route up into the mountains, and she took his advice, heading west from the village, past the slumped, decaying manor, out along the road to the old reactor. She was hoping to find some sign of the bandits – vehicle tracks, bullet casings, discarded food – that could start her on their trail.

What she did find were chocobo tracks. The birds that lived up here must be black as night, she thought, looking up at the rocky peaks rising on either side of her.

She wondered if she still had the knack for catching them. She hadn't had a chance to practice it since Reno showed her how. That must have been, what, a year ago? They'd been driving out someplace – Rocket Town, that was it – but the mako cell powering their car had died. So while Reno was messing around under the chassis, trying to coax some more juice from it, she'd gone for a walk. And then she came across the footprints.

For some reason that was never made entirely clear, Reno had a chocobo lure stashed among the materia in the car's boot, so he'd sent her off to look for some greens while he hunted around for it. By the time she came back with a fistful of leaves he was ready.

"You know, I fucking hate these birds," he'd said as they waited for one to show up. "You never know what they're going to do."

Once they'd wrangled a couple and mounted up, Elena had found herself enjoying it. Getting a wild one to go in the right direction meant you were constantly wrestling with it – it was a challenge. And the feathers were so soft under her hands.

What had they even been doing out at Rocket Town? It took Elena a while to remember: some old guy, an ex-chemist, was claiming he could cure the stigma with an elixir compound. Rufus was understandably interested, so Elena and Reno had gone to see if there was any truth to what he was saying. Of course, the elixir did nothing to stop the tar eating into the kids' limbs. It just took some of the pain away.

In those days, the intervening years between one calamity and the next, the stigma was like a stormcloud. The way it hung over everything. All their efforts had been focused on finding a cure. The painful thing was, it was really a job for scientists, not Turks. That last year, with Rufus dying before their eyes despite everything, Elena had felt redundant, blunted. She was sure the others were the same, even if they'd never talked about it. She'd been excited when the operation at Northern Cave came up. Finally, a chance to be useful. But that was before – before -

She turned back to look how far she'd climbed. It was full daylight now, and the red roofs of Nibelheim were glowing like tiny embers far below her. As she got higher into the clean mountain air, she could feel her mind cool off and untangle, and her fears seemed far away. Maybe this was what she needed, after all, she thought. Some perspective.

At first she wasn't sure if she was imagining the gunshots. From far off they were just quiet pops. But as she got in closer, the sound widened into deep booms that rolled around the mountains. The way the shots echoed made it difficult to tell where they were coming from, but Elena thought it was in a valley to her right.

She left the reactor road, scrambling up a scree bank and along a terrace dotted with boulders and thorny scrub. The gunfire was getting louder, which was a sign she was heading in the right direction. A lot of shots were being fired – about fifteen a minute, Elena guessed. Almost like some kind of fight was going on. Cautiously, she eased her pistol from its holster.

The valley narrowed as she got deeper in, and bent around a corner near the end, where the shots were coming from. It presented Elena with a problem. There was no cover in the valley, no trees to conceal her, so as soon as she came around the corner, she'd be in plain sight of whoever was doing the shooting.

To avoid that, she climbed up a bluff just before the valley's bend, and hiked up a steep slope until she was well above the valley floor. Then she sidled around, careful placing each foot so she wouldn't send any loose stones tumbling down the mountainside.

When she caught sight of the people she ducked behind the nearest boulder, and waited. The shots kept booming, but none were aimed at her. She swung off the backpack and got out her binoculars. Then, carefully, she stuck her head above the rock and glassed the shooters.

There were six of them, four female and two male, and they all carried rifles. Target shooting – that was what they were doing. They'd set up a range of objects – glass bottles, cans, scraps of metal – on some rocks and were taking shots from about 80 metres.

Elena started taking mental notes. She could almost imagine herself being debriefed by Tseng, the questions he would ask.

_What kind of weapons did they have?_

Looked like old rifles, sir, but they were in good condition.

_Was that all?_

I think – no, sir. One of them had an SMG. Looked like an old Shinra-issue one. He wasn't shooting, just directing the others. Adjusting sights, changing their grip, that kind of thing. I think he might have been in charge.

_What were they wearing? Did they look well equipped?_

Nothing they wore matched, sir, but it was all military style. Fatigues, boots. The boots might have been Shinra-issue too. But sir, the weird thing was they all wore scraps of this blue-green cloth. The colour of mako. Some of them had it wrapped around their heads, some their arms.

_And how was their shooting?_

Mostly pretty good, sir. A couple of them looked like they were still new to it. Not quite comfortable holding their rifles.

_It was a training exercise._

Yes, sir. That's what I thought. There were no signs of a camp – it looked like they'd walked out to practise their aim.

_So what action did you take?_

I waited, sir. And then I followed them. I wanted to find out where they were camped out.

_Elena, you've done well._

But would he really say that? After what happened in the crater, Elena wasn't sure. Why was she here, if Tseng thought she was competent? Competent Turks, like Reno and Rude - like her sister, they didn't get vacations. Unless they asked.

It was another couple of hours before the bandits stopped shooting and moved off. Elena spent most of the time behind her rock, trying to keep warm, sticking her head out every few minutes to check nothing had happened.

When they left they did so in single file, heading up a steep slope at the end of the valley, and over a saddle between two snow-capped peaks. Elena watched them through the binoculars. When they were out of sight, she pulled her backpack on and set off towards the valley floor, running and sliding on scree.

It was a steep climb up to the saddle where the bandits had disappeared, and by the time Elena reached it she was sweating under her thick jersey. Her fatigue made her take a second to realise what she was looking at.

Down below her – several hundred metres below - was the old mako reactor, squat, rusting, ugly. And there were bandits all around it. Elena flattened herself against a rock face, before anyone could spot her silhouetted against the skyline. From her altitude the bandits were just insects, so she fished out the binoculars and put them to her eyes.

They'd made camp around the reactor, and it wasn't a small operation. Elena counted three trucks, five motorbikes, and about forty people. They all wore those strips of mako-coloured cloth. They'd pitched tents in a ring on the flat ground around the entrance to the reactor, and a cookfire was burning in the middle. Supplies – food and ammunition, judging by what she could see of the packaging – were piled up under tarpaulins on the edge of the camp. Two anti-aircraft guns were pulled up next to the trucks.

Was this really a bandit hideout? Surely a pack of bandits wouldn't be this big, this well-organised. And if they were, they would have moved in on Nibelheim by now, wouldn't they?

So just who the hell were these guys? And what was their game?

Well, there was only one way to find out, wasn't there? She'd wait for the night to fall, and then sneak in to the camp, see what she could dig out. Perhaps she could pull one of the bandits away, make them talk.

For a moment, she thought about calling Tseng or Rufus, letting them know what was going on. But she could imagine what they'd say. They'd order her to come back in, go and lie on a beach in Costa, let someone else handle the situation. They might as well come out and say it: "You're not good enough". Well, she'd show them.

Night took forever to fall. Elena squatted out of sight, out of the cold wind. She ate the food Raymond had given her and watched the sun slowly drop. By the time it reached the horizon and the sky had started to pale, Elena's breath was wafting from her mouth as steam, and she had to tuck her hands under her armpits to keep the feeling in them. She'd been stupid not to bring warmer clothes. Every fifteen minutes she got up and did squats to keep her body temperature up – a trick she'd learned in Icicle.

When the night fully fell it was a clear one, with a half moon and a vast glowing spray of stars. That was good and bad, Elena decided. She'd be more visible, but it would also make her descent into the camp a lot easier.

She was itching to get down there; her body was craving the action. But she knew she had to wait until the whole camp was asleep.

Finally, with the moon high overhead, she judged the time was right. She took it slow going down the hill, following a path that looked like it had been worn in by the bandits.

When the ground flattened out she crept into a pool of shadow between two of the tents, and crouched there, peering into the centre of the camp. The fire had died down to embers and she couldn't see any sentries. Someone in the tent to her left was snoring.

Moving quickly but as quietly as she could, Elena dashed over to one of the supply piles and peeled back a corner of the tarpaulin to look at what the crates contained. The pile was definitely food – flour, rice, dried fruit – but so much of it! How long were these guys planning on staying up here? This stock looked like it would last them six months.

The next pile was ammunition, as she'd suspected, and again they were well-supplied. Big shells for the aircraft guns too. She darted over to the third stack, and there made a surprising discovery: the crates contained rows and rows of pamphlets.

Pamphlets? What kind of bandit group kept bundles of pamphlets on site? Elena held one up to the moonlight to try and read it. The word "Phoenix" was written in big red letters on the front page. She was about to stuff it in her pocket and take off when she heard a foot crunch in some gravel behind her. She spun around.

A man stood a few feet away with his rifle trained on her.

"Don't move," he said.

* * *

_Thanks for reading!  
_


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

After Rude parked the car outside the WRO headquarters in Edge, he went around the side to open the President's door. But Rufus was already out, straightening his white suit, checking the clasp on his briefcase. He'd been like that ever since he got cured – eager to do these things for himself. Like he was enjoying having his old strength back, being able to move the way he used to. Sometimes Rude worried it made them look unprofessional, the President getting his own door. But then, Rufus Shinra was Rufus Shinra. Did he ever look unprofessional?

Even the President's walking style had changed since the rain, Rude thought as he followed his boss into the WRO lobby, through the suited mobs of bureaucrats. Rufus had what you'd call a spring in his step.

The WRO headquarters paled in comparison to the old Shinra building, Rude thought. It lacked the scale, the bold design on the outside, the luxury interior. It wasn't a statement of power the way the Shinra building was. But that was the point, he guessed. The WRO showing it was a different beast. More democratic. For the people. A building fit for purpose, nothing more.

"You saw Elena off yesterday?" Rufus asked him as they waited for the elevator.

Rude shrugged, tugged at a stray thread on his shirt cuff.

"She wasn't happy to be leaving, sir. Told me to take her back to work. I tried to talk her around, but – well, you know Elena, sir. I'm not sure I succeeded."

"But she got on the ship?"

"Yes, sir." He'd waited around, out of sight, to make sure.

"Good. It's what she needs, some time out. But I wish she'd chosen Costa. It's lovely, this time of year."

The elevator arrived, pinged, the doors slid open, more bureaucrats exited. Rufus and Rude stepped inside. Rude pressed the button for the top floor.

"Sir, do you mind if I ask what this meeting is about?" he said.

"I can only guess," Rufus told him. "Reeve was rather coy about it on the phone. Some kind of security concern he wants our help with. Although I have my suspicions."

That was an odd request, Rude thought. The WRO was the one with the army these days. What could Rufus and his handful of Turks get done that they couldn't?

The doors opened on the top floor and they walked along a carpeted corridor with office doors on either side. It was quieter up here, more reverent. These were what you called corridors of power - the offices of the women and men who were shaping their new world.

The door to the boardroom was at the end of the corridor. Rude made sure he beat Rufus to it, and held it open for the President to make his entrance.

The boardroom was all window at the far end, with a view out over the ruins of Midgar. Rude wondered if that was deliberate – a constant reminder of why they were there, what they were tasked with. The room was dominated by a long wooden table, but today most of the chairs around it were empty.

Reeve Tuesti and a two others who Rude probably could have named if he'd put his mind to it were sat at the far end. There was an older woman in a stiff silk jacket who he knew represented Wutai, and a man who he thought might have been a Shinra colonel. Once upon a time.

The glances sent Rufus' way - except perhaps Tuesti's - when he entered were cold and edgy, like shards of ice. Most of the WRO hated Rufus – they hated that they still needed him, needed his money.

Rufus showed no signs that he noticed the hostile reception, wearing his charming golden boy smile as he went and took his seat. The President had developed a thick skin at an early age. He'd had to, Rude guessed. He stood against the wall behind the President's chair, folded his hands behind his back.

"Rufus," Tuesti said. "Thank you for joining us." He looked tired, Rude thought. Deep bags like bruises under his eyes, the skin almost hanging off his face. Had those grey hairs been there the last time Rude saw him? He didn't remember noticing them.

"Thank you for the invitation," Rufus said. "It feels good to be sitting in a boardroom again."

Rude watched the faces around at table sour. He had to stop himself smiling – Rufus knew exactly how to wind these people up.

"Let's just get on with it," the woman from Wutai said. Her name was just at the edge of Rude's brain – Chekhov, that was it. She sounded tired too.

"Very well," Tuesti said, pushing the hair back off his face. He slid a pamphlet across the table to Rufus. "Have a look at this."

The pamphlet had the word, "Phoenix" written across the front in red letters, and a picture. A group of people advanced towards the viewer, smiling, wielding simple tools - sickles, spades, garden hoes, hammers.

"They're saying modern civilisation can't exist without somehow causing damage to the planet," Tuesti said. "Apparently Meteor, the Weapons and geostigma were the planet's way of showing us that. Their solution is for humans to go back to living the way we did 300 years ago – farming, fishing, hunting and gathering. Living in villages rather than cities and towns."

"'Now the ashes of the old world provide fertile ground for a brave new one to grow,'" Rufus read aloud. He tossed the pamphlet back on the table. "They sound rather harmless. Is this the security concern you were talking about?"

"This ain't just a bunch of hippies wanting to grow out their hair and live in the countryside," the ex-colonel said. "They've got arms. They want to impose their views on everybody. By force if they need to." He was the WRO's public security spokesman, Rude remembered. Mallet – that was his name.

"The movement started in Fort Condor," Chekhov said. "The rebels your company created when you tried to build the reactor there. Their leader, after the Meteor, he created this new ideology. Since then it has spread. In secret. They pass around these pamphlets, talk about their ideas. Slowly their numbers have grown. They're even on the Western Continent now."

"How long have you known about this?" Rufus wanted to know.

"Six months," Tuesti said. "At first we thought they were harmless. We never imagined they'd become militant."

One of Tuesti's greatest strengths as a public figure, Rude thought, was his voice. He always sounded so mild, so understanding, even when delivering a statement like that. It was hard to believe anything was wrong when he was talking.

"Militant?"

Tuesti looked grim. He handed Rufus another set of photographs.

"One of our aircraft took these yesterday. They appear to have set up a perimeter around Fort Condor."

Rude caught glimpses of the photos as Rufus flicked through them. Guns, trucks, soldiers.

"How many of them are there?"

"It's difficult to make even an educated guess," Tuesti said. "It could be anything between five hundred and two thousand."

"Then why am I here?" A mocking smile had drifted onto Rufus' lips. "Surely the WRO can handle two thousand recruits."

Chekhov was looking like she wanted Rufus' head on a spike. Her bony hands were clenched like claws, the veins puffed up.

Tuesti just looked embarrassed. "These are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters," he said. "We can't move against them without looking like – well, like the bad guys. And I'm sure you don't need me to explain how damaging that would be. Already their support is growing by the day."

"And why would that be?" Rufus asked. He was enjoying this, Rude realised. Making the WRO admit to every last fuck-up.

Now even Tuesti looked fed up. "The recovery isn't going as well as – as well as we'd hoped. People are frustrated, young people especially. There aren't enough jobs. Many places still don't have electricity, inflation's putting the cost of food - but why am I telling you this?"He laughed nervously. "You know it all better than we do. Are you going to help us?"

"Why, you haven't told me how I can help," Rufus said, leaning back his chair.

"We need you to deal with this group," Tuesti said. "Shut them down, cut off their support. Before they become too powerful."

"We need someone who isn't afraid to play the bad guy," Mallet said bluntly. "Someone who already knows how to do it."

A smile opened up on Rufus' face – but very different to the one he'd employed when he opened the room. This one was gloating, cruel. "What makes you think I'd know how to do that?" he asked.

Mallet abruptly pushed his chair out and left the room.

Rufus turned to Tuesti. "You're right. This is our area of expertise. We'll take care of it."

Tuesti slumped in his chair. "Thank the Cetra. I thought we were going to be sitting here all day, sniping at each other." He handed Rufus a dossier. "That's everything we know," he said.

Rufus put it into his briefcase. "We'll talk again once I've had a look," he said. He shook hands with Reeve, a reluctant Chekhov. No money had changed hands, but Rude felt like he'd just witnessed an exchange of something. Power, maybe.

They left. In the elevator on the way down, Rude asked:

"How come we didn't know about this? Why haven't we done anything?"

"I wanted Reeve to ask me," Rufus said, grinning, his blue eyes bright with something like triumph. "It gives us more bargaining power, the next time I want something from him. Besides, who says we didn't know about them? Who says we haven't been doing anything?"

* * *

_If you're still going, thanks for bearing with this. The plot is ballooning and it's becoming a completely different story to what I originally intended. I have no idea where it's going to go, but I'm really excited about writing it!_


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